[Dark Mirage]

Ok, time to redo this entirely.So I recently was looking through what's left of my older game magazines (god i wish I never threw some out...) and found TONS of protos and unreleased shit I never even realized existed before. So for the purposes of X-Cult, I've scanned everything I found and am posting the pictures here. I may update this section off and on as I go through other magazines, but this is going to be the bulk of it.Now please... If some of you have seen these before or they've already been posted, go easy on me. I'm doing this for ease of posting instead of swimming through all of X-Cult to make certain this is all fresh. I did briefly go through the whole site, so I'm pretty certain a LOT of this is new... or at least the articles are.So without farther ado... (Oh, and I apologize for the shitty images from Game players. No wonder they went under. It looks like they were taking pictures with a $5 instant camera looking through a smudgy blue window half the time.)64DD:Ah yeah, the 64 add-on that was only ever seen in Japan. I added this in here because look at that freaking release list! There were tons of games planned for it it would seem... Castlevania 64:Wow, now what's really interesting about these is the FOUR playable characters. Apparently Cornell was removed for the second game... probably due to time constraints. What's cool though is how they actually have him doing the whole wolf thing in this version as well. I have no idea who that "Frankensteins monster" character is though. Either way, I've never seen pictures of either character in the original game except for these screenies. And what's up with jumping off walls?Conkers Quest:Hahahaha, Wow. This is back when the game was still "cute". I'm not sure if the "adult" comments are real or sarcastic. As far as I understand from the Wiki article, by this point the game was actually still aimed at the younger audience. And Conkers Quest was the very first name for the title so... It's up in the air.Onimusha 2:I own this game, and I don't remember ever playing as the guy with an eye patch.Starfox 64:I have NO idea wtf is going on with that middle picture. Someone probably botched the screen shot or shopped it somehow. Just another shitty Gameplayers photo in the end. Eitherway, The health bar is very different in this build than the final.Earthworm Jim 3D:I know there's shots of this game around the net, but I don't remember this ad from anywhere.Very early FFVII:I fixed the smudged scan of the first page. Basically a VERY early FFVII with all kinds of crazy shit lke Bahamut infront of the Shinra building, Bahamut in what appears to be Kalm battling a monster, Cloud, Aeris, and Barret fighting somewhere, and a very early set of enemies in what might be a test battlefield.http://www.youtube.c...h?v=cxjRrE8nTqMHeres the video of the FFVI SGI demo for anyone who hasn't seen it. The old N64 Final Fantasy as it were. The one Square used to test their new battle system. FFVII was being developed for for the N64 until the team realized what they wanted to do was taking up WAY to much space and would never be done on a cartridge. So bye bye Nintendo, hello Sony.Freak Boy:Excuse the gap of stuff at the top. For some reason I cut out a picture on the page behind for a project. I remember there being more and better screens of this game in Nintendo Power, but I don't have them. The game got two radical re-designs and then was canned. Too bad, because I remember looking forward to this when i was younger.Harrier 2000:Just another canned N64 titleHarrier 2001:The later version of the same game. Also unreleased due to legal battles.Jet Force Gemini:Early shots of the game. Check out that red armor. Makes the game look much more childish than it turned out to be. Don't you just love how Rare used to be all about the fluffy wuffy?Mario Golf:Looks like a very early version of the game. Maybe Alpha stage?Metal Gear Solid:I REALLY wish GP had gotten better pictures than this. This is a very, very early MGS. Look at that crazy science fiction armor Snake is wearing. And rendered CG scenes? That was obviously a canned idea. and for the better.Mission Impossible 64 and Tonic Trouble:Totally different interface on MI. Early Tonic Trouble too, as noted by the fact the main character has no bow tie.Resident Evil 2:Well uh... That game underwent a big changeRobotech 64:Otherwise known as Robotech Crystal Dreams. More info can be found at this site: http://n64.icequake....om/can-rtch.htm. A huge shame it never saw the light of day, especially since it was only a couple months from completion. But hey, the whole game exists out there... Dammit Nintendo! have this one finished for the Wii VC!Super Mario Adventure (Paper Mario 64):Yep, an older version of the title. Very different health bar there.

This post has been edited by Dark Mirage: 21 January 2007 - 05:39 AM

[SSUK]

So make up your mind, is it FFVII or FFVIII? Also, we have scans of that gamepro/whatever regarding the Sonic 32x article. Check the Xtreme section on CulT. Get pics of this mag anyway.

[Dark Mirage]

Survivor: Day One:Woah. Never ever seen this before until I browsed through my mags. Got canceled along with Robotech when the company went broke (they were both being done by GameTek).Thrill Kill:Hahaha, I still remember the controversy surrounding this game. It basically killed it completely. I bet you anything it'd be approved today though.Alpha Zelda 64:Incredibly early Ocarina shots. Look at this junk! It looks terrible! We've got cartoon octorocks coming out of trees, balloon like Poes, very empty towns, a forest in the middle of nowhere with sick amounts of fog, no C-Button's to hold your items, cartoon Stalfos, some giant Dodongo lizard in a brick maze, and woman in a green dress.Now I know there are some other proto shots in a Nintendo power magazine, but I couldn't find it in my stack. It just had link running around the same featureless brick maze with the Dodongos.For ease of saving these, here's a link to the .zip file if you're interested. I also have the original BMP files, but you'll have to ask me for them. They're too large to post normally.: http://rapidshare.co...t_pics.zip.htmlSo there you go. If anyone is going to host these or put them up somewhere, please at least give me the credit for scanning them. It took me a long time to sort through all my magazines, scan, crop, and edit the file sizes so other people would be able to see them. Hope you all enjoyed looking at them though! Makes you really appreciate what became of Ocarina of Time at least, doesn't it? :P

This post has been edited by Dark Mirage: 21 January 2007 - 05:53 AM

[Rockman Zero]

Dark Mirage, on Jan 13 2007, 07:20 PM, said:

http://img.photobuck...on/Sonic32x.jpg

That's nnot the Sonic 2 commercial. It's the Sonic CG movie. :P (Wasn't that featured at the Epcot Center?)

[Dark Mirage]

I thought it was the commercial... I remember it from Sonic Jam in either case. Either way, they got it way wrong :PI'm going to see what other interesting stuff I can dig up. I don't know who's in charge of the FFVII section of X-Cult, but if you want to use those proto images you're welcome too. If you feel they're worth putting there anyways. If possible though I'd like to be credited for scanning them...

[RattleMan]

AFAIK, that Sonic 3D commercial is "Sonic Ride", an actual physical game-ride that was in Japan for a time

[grap3fruitman]

Dark Mirage, on Jan 13 2007, 09:20 PM, said:

Wow, they were bigger than that before. I guess turning them into jpegs from bmps made a big difference

No, Photobucket resized your shit.

[Dark Mirage]

Ah well... they're still good enough quality you can read them. I'll go through the rest of the mags tomorrow and scan some more stuff later on. Homework is killing me right now.

[SSUK]

Dark Mirage, on Jan 14 2007, 03:54 AM, said:

AFAIK, that Sonic 3D commercial is "Sonic Ride", an actual physical game-ride that was in Japan for a time

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=b5IPqLIDrPw Indeed it is.

[Malchik.]

That Sonic / Eggman scene was right out of Roadrunner. Hilarious.

[ChibiGoku]

This is the first time I've seen those FFVII screens.

[biggestsonicfan]

ChibiGoku, on Jan 15 2007, 05:44 PM, said:

This is the first time I've seen those FFVII screens.

Those screens appear to be from the Squaresoft Ultra64 tech demo. It was an automated fight sequence or something. (I know, you probably think I'm talking about the FF VI one, but yes, there was ALSO a FF VII one.)

[Dark Mirage]

Added Resident Evil 2 to the mix. It's not included in the zip yet though.BTW, in case anyone misses it, the pictures at the website get bigger if you click them. Not that I think anyone would probably miss that, but just in case...

[Dave0]

The FFVII and MGS screens are really interesting. Interesting that there are red Shinra guards standing around in the entrance to the first reactor. They aren't there at all in the final game. I can't help but laugh though at the writer's comments on how amazing FFVII's graphics are, especially the in-game ones. Also about Onimusha 2: the dude with the eyepatch is presumably an early Jubei. You see the trailer for it once you complete Onimusha 1.

This post has been edited by Dave0: 20 January 2007 - 03:23 PM

[Dark Mirage]

I know somewhere I had a giant article and screens of the PS1 version of Too Human (you know... that game that was for PS1 that was then for Gamecube, that is now a crappy looking 360 title?). I'll see if I can dig that up later today or tomorrow.Oh, and it's kinda funny how they mention FF7 was originally 2 discs :P. I guess what's his name in charge was right when he said they got way too greedy with what they wanted to see in the game. Oh well, it worked out great in the end.

[Ultima]

Dave0, on Jan 20 2007, 08:14 PM, said:

The FFVII and MGS screens are really interesting. Interesting that there are red Shinra guards standing around in the entrance to the first reactor. They aren't there at all in the final game. I can't help but laugh though at the writer's comments on how amazing FFVII's graphics are, especially the in-game ones. Also about Onimusha 2: the dude with the eyepatch is presumably an early Jubei. You see the trailer for it once you complete Onimusha 1.

That was the general consensus at the time though. Tons of magazines gave FF7 a 10/10 for graphics =P

[Dark Mirage]

Update:- Added another Survivor: Day One image- Added Harrier 2001- Added Super Mario Adventure- Added Mario Golf- Added Jet Force Gemini- Added another article with shots of early MGS- Added another shot of Conkers Quest- Added a the best article yet on a super early Castlevania 64- zip file now includes all photos in the threadWhew, well I think that's it. I know I had a lot more stuff at one time, but I have no idea where the magazines have gone. They're either in my basement or were thrown out at one time. If I find them anytime soon I'll be sure to update this. It's really too bad I can't find the Too Human stuff though. It was a really wicked article with tons of screens explaining how the game was 4 discs long and had tons and tons of crazy shit in it. Basically you worked some secret agency or something and you could enhance your body through swapping human body parts for robot ones... The whole premise was there would be multiple paths depending on whither you were Too Human, or not. I have no idea if that's what the 360 game is like anymore, but you can trust me when I say the original had a veeeerrrrryyyy different look and feel to it. None of that giant armor crap.Oh, and I had to split this stuff into my second post because the first had to many images.Anyhow, hope you've all found this interesting. I always think it's cool to look back the "could have been"'s of the game industry. It's always fun to see what some of your favorite titles looked like before they were actually completed too.